Shaykh Munaf’s Arabic conversations: Episode 4

In this article I’ll be guiding you through the third episode in Shaykh Munaf’s series of Arabic conversations. This episode starts with Shaykh Munaf (منافmunaaf) telephoning Abdur Rahman (عبد الرحمانʕabd ir-raḥmaan). Here’s the video:

The action in these videos takes place in Trinidad, which is why Abdur Rahman answers the phone with an English “hello”. In an Arabic-speaking country you could answer the phone with this word, which is borrowed from the French word allô (which explains why there is no h in it).

آلو!

’aluuh!/’alooh!

‘Hello!’ (only on the phone)

The following expression used can be used for any holiday—Islamic, Christian, secular, or otherwise:

عِيد مُبارَك!

ʕiid mubaarak!

‘Happy holiday!’

This expression is used in the same way:

كُلّ عام وَأَنْتَ بِخَيْر.

kull ʕaam wa ’anta bi khayr.

‘Happy holiday!’ (similar to ‘many happy returns’)

You can find lots of fancy images of this expression on the using Google images. This one uses the plural form أنتم’antum instead of أنتَ’anta:

A standard response to this expression is this:

وَأنْتَ بِخَيْر.

wa ’anta bi khayr

(response)

There is also a common variant of this expression:

كُلّ سَنَة وَأَنْتَ طَيِّب.

kull sana wa ’anta ṭayyib.

‘Happy holiday!’ (variant, similar to ‘many happy returns’)

These expressions use different Arabic words for ‘year’:

سَنَة

عام

sana

ʕaam

‘year’

So, both كلّ عامkull ʕaam and كلّ سنةkull sana mean ‘every year’.

The response used in the video is more complicated. I won’t go into it, but here it is:

مِنْ الْعائِدِين، إِنْ شاءَ الله.

mina l-ʕaa’idiin, ’in shaa’a l-laah.

‘And may you be among those returning, if God wills.’

Shaykh Munaf emphasizes how well he is doing by adding this common word, which is an oath:

واللهِ

wa l-laahi

‘by God; I swear to God; really’

This word is very often used in the sense of ‘really’, ‘I’m serious’, or ‘I really mean it’. It is so commonly used that it is not actually a very strong oath. Don’t assume someone is telling you the truth just because they say واللهwa l-laahi.

Munaf asks Abdur Rahman what he’s going to do today:

ماذا سَتَفْعَل الْيَوم؟

maadhaa sa tafʕal il-yawm?more formal: maadhaa sa tafʕalu l-yawm?

‘What will you do today?’

In this video, we will see several instances of the particle sa, which is combined with a verb in the present tense to express the future:

The word عامʕaamm means either ‘general’ or ‘public’. Here are two other common phrases in which it occurs:

مَكْتَبة عامّة

حَدِيقة عامّة

maktaba ʕaamma

ḥadiiqa ʕaamma

‘public library’

‘park’ (lit. ‘public garden’)

You may have noticed that the word for ‘public; general’ (ʕaamm) sounds very similar to one of the words we saw above for ‘year’ above (ʕaam). They are indeed very close! If these phrases come at the end of a phrase or before a pause, you will not hear any difference at all, but in other contexts you will clearly here the double mm in ʕaamm.

Here are another couple of words you will need at this point in the conversation:

أَيْضًا

’ayḍan

‘also’

مَعَها

maʕa-haa

‘with her’

Here are the masculine and feminine forms of ‘colleague’, a word which is used:

زَمِيل / زَمِيلة

zamiil / zamiila

‘colleague, classmate, coworker’

This word is used more frequently in Arabic than the English word ‘colleague’ (especially as the latter is used in American English). It is also a safer word to use than صديق/صديقةṣadiiq/ṣadiiqa to refer to casual male–female relationships.

Here’s another question Munaf asks:

هَلْ تَذْهَب لِلْغَداء؟

hal tadhhab li l-ghadaa’?more formal: hal tadhhabu li l-ghadaa’?

‘Are you going for lunch?’

To say that he’s not going to anyone’s house, Abdur Rahman says the following:

The word أحد’aḥad can also much ‘someone’, but in a negative context, such as in this sentence, it means ‘no one, not… anyone’.

Abdur Rahman refers to having lunch, using the following expression:

سَأَتَناوَل الْغَداء.

sa ’atanaawal il-ghadaa’.more formal: sa ’atanaawalu l-ghadaa’.

‘I will have lunch.’

If you would like to know more about expressions about meals and eating, take a look at the following article.

In explaining that he will be going to his uncle’s house, Abdur Rahman uses the following phrase, pronouncing it in formal/Classical Arabic:

إِلى بَيْتِهِ

’ilaa bayti-hi

‘to his house’

In informal Arabic this would be simply ’ilaa bayt-uh. In formal Arabic, the suffix for ‘him/his’ is normally pronounced -hu, but when an i, ii, or y sound precedes it, it is pronounced as -hi instead. You can see that in the three different case forms of بيتbayt ‘house’, combined with this pronominal suffix:

Munaf refers to the evening prayers as a way of saying when he is free. This is a very common way to refer to times of day, even for people who don’t regularly pray. Here are the names of the five obligatory daily prayer times:

Here the word يمكنyumkin ‘is possible’ is a verb. It is never conjugated to other persons. That is, it always appears in the هوhuwa form. That is somewhat like English ‘It is possible (for me) to go’; we would never say ‘I am possible to go.’

Abdur Rahman mumbles to himself in English trying to think of how he should handle this request for an invitation. Munaf can’t understand him: